China banned Ultraman Tiga and people are NOT happy. Published on Sep 24.

Netizens complained about the ridiculously broad regulation on media content.

Chinese social media users are reacting overwhelmingly negative towards Japanese special effect action series Ultraman Tiga being taken down from all video platforms. In one online survey, 95% of participants voted that they could not understand the reasons behind it.

It is now trending number one on Weibo, generating 800 millions views and over 260 thousand discussions. If you scroll down to see what people are saying, almost everyone is slamming the removal.

It's still not clear as to why the series was taken down, but people are making connections between the incident and a report from earlier this year by a provincial government agency, which concluded that 1465 issues were discovered in 21 anime series, and Tiga was one of them.

The agency, Jiangsu Consumer Council, has since denied the connection and said the platforms took the series down by themselves. But people are not convinced.

One of the video sites, Youku, said that it was taken down for "content optimization". But later, replying to another media inquiry, Youku changed the reason to "maybe the video source expired".

Though no clear explanation is provided, there's already a lot of complaints about excessive regulation. One said that "taking down Tiga is not gonna get your kids into Peking University", referring to the previous survey where parents were concerned about it being a distraction.

Some, responding to the accusation that Tiga was too violent and dark, suggest a rating system for media content. Some argue that the theme of Tiga and the Ultraman series in general was to teach kids about courage and responsibility.

Tiga is one of the most popular Ultraman series in China. Even those who don't normally watch Ultraman knows about his name. It was imported to China in 2004, almost ten yeas after its predecessor Ultraman 80.

Unlike those before it, Tiga was not only dubbed, it has Chinese versions of the opening and ending music. Many growing up during that period of time would still recognize the music today. And the good looking leading guy and girl helped its popularity too.

It's likely that Tiga is targeted due to it being a household name among the younger generation. Among all the Ultraman series, it has a pretty light tone, unlike some of the other entries such as Ultraman Leo and Ultraman Nexus, which are considered more violent and mature.

Update: Three days later, Ultraman Tiga is back on all platforms, but reportedly with some episodes missing and scenes cut.